William B. Skelton

An American profession of arms : the army officer corps, 1784-1861

Following the formation of a regular army in 1784, a popular distruct of military power and the generally unsettled nature of national administration kept the army in a continual state of fluctuation, both in terms of organisation and size. Few officers were making a long-term commitment to military service. But by 1860, a professional army career was becoming a way of life. In that year, 41.5 percent of officers had served 30 years, compared to only 2.6 percent in 1797. Historians, while recognising the emergence of a pre-Civil War professional army, have generally placed the solid foundation of military professionalism in the post-Civil War era. William Skelton maintains, however, that the early national and ante-bellum eras were crucial to the rise of the American profession of arms. Although tiny by todays standards, the early officer corps nevertheless maintained strong institutional support and internal cohesion through a regular system of recruitment, professional training and education, and a high degree of leadership continuity. Through socialisation and lengthening career commitments, officers came to share a common vision of their collective role with respect to warfare, foreign policy, Indian affairs, domestic politics, and civilian life. The result, Skelton shows, was the formation of a distinctive military subculture rooted in tightly knit garrison communities across the frontier and along the seaboard, from which prominent Civil War leaders would emerge and whose essential character would persist well into the 20th century.

The Commanding Generals and the Question of Civil Control in the Antebellum U.S. Army

Civilian control of the military is one of the most important of America’s political traditions. While direct military challenges to civilian supremacy have been rare, tensions over the degree and character of civil control have been endemic. During the nineteenth century, a main focus of friction was the office of commanding general of the army, or general‐in‐chief. This position was an unintended byproduct of the reduction of the army in 1821, and its powers and functions were never clearly defined, particularly its relationship to the civilian secretary of war. Ambitious commanding generals, notably Alexander Macomb (1828–1841) and Winfield Scott (1841–1861), strove for actual command of the army as a whole: staff departments as well as line regiments. In their view, the president’s command powers should be exericsed directly through the professional head of the army, with the secretary relegated to a supporting administrative role. Civilian leaders, backed by high‐ranking staff officers, resisted the generals’ pretensions, claiming that they threatened the president’s constitutional powers and undermined civilian control. The commanding generals were most successful in navigating the civil‐military minefields when they downplayed active command and focused on the more prosaic but vital role of chief military adviser to the government, a function later confirmed with the establishment of the modern army general staff in 1903.

The Army in Transformation, 1790-1860 (review)

The primary documents of the operations of Davout’s corps were compiled by a descendant in 1896. As such, it is a great source on the command, operations, and tactics of an army corps during the Napoleonic wars. Scott Bowden, Matthew Delamater, and the other editors have produced an edited English translation of this work. Although expensive, this is a magnificent book, bound in red leather with gold lettering on the cover and gold leaf pages. Within the covers are highly detailed color maps depicting the routes of the armies, battles, and the battlefield deployments of the Corps down to battalion level in its combats during the campaigns of 1805–7. There are detailed orders of battle and unit strengths of each battalion in the Corps at the various stages of operations are given. Additionally there are many plates depicting the uniforms of the troops and combat of the period. The outstanding graphics, tables, maps, and diagrams are critical in following the very detailed text. Each chapter concentrates on one of the major campaigns. There is a short editor’s introduction giving an overview of the campaign, followed by translations of the actual combat reports written by Marshal Davout, the various division commanders, and in some cases the brigade and regimental commanders. Interspersed in the text, along with the graphics, are thumbnail biographies of the various officers writing the reports. The information and manner of presentation make this work a definite must for both the professional historian and the layman specialist. The primary documents are an aid in research, while the combination of the graphics and text provides an insight into the tactics of the period, and the way a Napoleonic corps fought. This also makes the volume an excellent companion for any detailed study of the campaigns of 1805–7 and for those who are interested in the military career of Davout, Napoleon’s Iron Marshal.